ryan_shah38•25d agoProlific Poster

Found a shortcut for Roman numerals that actually works in my History class

Been struggling to memorize dates with Roman numerals for my final exam. Spent 3 hours last Tuesday just trying to get 1492 and 1776 right. Then my roommate showed me this trick where you break each letter into a number value and add them up left to right. First try after that I got 8 out of 10 correct. Has anyone else used a math trick for history dates like this?

3 comments

3 Comments

charles_mitchell25d ago

Same here, I always forgot which order the L and C go until I just started adding them up like basic math.

emerym3625d agoMost Upvoted

Wait hang on, I gotta disagree a bit here. Memorizing dates by converting Roman numerals to math feels like learning a whole new system when you could just.. learn the actual dates straight up. That math trick might help you pass a quiz but it won't help you understand why those dates matter or what happened around them. I think if you lean too hard on converting letters to numbers you're gonna freeze up when you see a weird date like MDCCLXXVI and you can't do the adding fast enough under pressure.

marywilson25d ago

My history final last year was the worst. Kept mixing up 1066 and 1215. Tried writing them over and over but it never stuck. That left to right adding trick sounds way better than my method of just staring at the page. One of those study apps helped me a little too just for the practice tests.